Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: historical physics

At 02:38 PM 7/23/96 -0700, Leigh Palmer wrote:


I'd like to see much more attention paid to the experimentalists and
observers in the curricula than one now sees. They are a neglected
group as a whole, I'm afraid. Everyone knows Lee and Yang received a
Nobel Prize for their "discovery" of the nonconservation of parity.
That prize would not have been awarded nearly so soon had it not been
for Wu's beautiful demonstration of it, and she didn't even share the
prize! I still remember the thrill of having her experiment explained
to me (within a very short time of its publication) by that other
neglected experimentalist Luis Alvarez in my nuclear physics class.
That thrill is surely worth sharing with one's students.


But, let's not forget the Nobel awarded to Penzias and Wilson for an
observation (3K background radiation) that confirmed a theoretical
prediction made in 1948 by Alpher and Hermann. Unfortunately, neither they
nor Dicke, Peebles, et. al. at Princeton bothered to search the literature
and acknowledge the earlier work. The Nobel committee also seemed ignorant
of the earlier work.

George Spagna **********************************************
Department of Physics * *
Randolph-Macon College * "An insanity as enormous, as complex *
P.O. Box 5005 * as the one around me had to be planned. *
Ashland, VA 23005-5505 * I've found the plan!" *
* *
phone: (804) 752-7344 * -- Robert Heinlein, "They" (1948) *
FAX: (804) 752-4724 * *
e-mail: gspagna@rmc.edu **********************************************
WWW: www.rmc.edu/~gspagna/gspagna.html